Health Effects of Chernobyl

[@MaruskaStarshaya]

the first group of firefighters didn't know they were dealing with a reactor core fire, they thought it's a regular fire in the maintenance building, the heads of the power plant hidden the fact of what was happened. And other groups of liquidators were majorly young men in their 20-s as they didn't ask much of what risks they've take. My friend's dad was a firefighter in Chornobyl and he had a lot of complications after, he died in 2004.

[@Wonkabar007]

My experience of the Chernobyl incident, was for three days I eat like a king, I was in a British Army unit which was spending a week in Bavaria southern Germany, doing some PR building work for the local community in a small town, on the second night after arrival at our campsite we saw an amazing sight, the tented eating hall was stacked high with trays of delicious strawberries and many milk churns full of cream, we never normally got to eat such large amounts of these tasty items, needless to say the cooks were our heroes, we eat like kings for the next three days, when suddenly the supply of strawberries and cream stopped and it was all taken away, on the orders of the commanding officer. It turned out fallout from Chernobyl had fallen on Bavaria, and not all the local farmers who had been ordered to dump their produce had done so, in true German efficiency style, some decided to take the government compensation for dumping the produce, then sell the strawberries and cream to the Army cooks on the cheap. 😀😋🍓

[@Zamolxes77]

So you eat like a King .... irradiated food ? Did you gain any superpowers ?

[@juztnlast953]

I really enjoyed reading your personal experience during these times of the Chernobyl disaster. I have to say being an American with German lineage I am in a position to express my open distain for actual Germans in Germany. I have my own personal anecdotes for my reasoning, but your own personal story of being fed contaminated food sold by Bavarian farmers who were already given recompense to dispose of it really just incensed me. A similar situation where Bayer Germany during the 80's AIDS epidemic had to dispose of stockpiles of blood bank blood suspected of being contaminated with HIV instead quietly sold their stockpiles off to the continent of Africa. Very similar to the scenario of your "dumb British Army cooks". Germans are just awful! LOL

[@certaindeed]

Say it ain't so...they are our NATO allies that need more US tax money

[@neilbishop1686]

@Matt S Thanks for your information.....you are so right.....I believe "gee the Bee" and John Thomas both live in some kind of dream world that they tend to manufacture out of half truths and out right lies....

[@chrishansen6863]

They were farmers for Christ’s sake. Might’ve not known anything about radiation so they assumed it was a waste not giving the strawberries away. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[@michazajac5881]

Well, It's, of course, a tragic loss of life. Whether you go with the number around 4000 or attempt to look for "excess deaths" in a wide population that was more or less affected. And then you realise - for example in Poland (with its industry based heavily on coal) air pollution is responsible for 20000 cases of death related to lung cancer. Every year. To make it even more ironic plans to build a nuclear power plant in Poland were cancelled (even if construction works was significantly advanced) mainly because of Chernobyl disaster.

[@arrux4822]

What is it with these soviet sympathizers? Fuck you

[@ferarry13]

coal plants mean more money in the short term. the politicians want money in their pocket within the 4 years theyre heads of state or in a senate or w.e. they dont benefit from the nuclear plants gains like 25 years down the line.

[@Mommyandtux]

Poland is a backwards shithole basically still living in the interwar period (living like its the 1920's or '30s instead of 2020's)

[@ABaumstumpf]

Like it was with Fukushima - they went to backup-coal plants. And the emissions of those have been estimated to cause as much as 10 times more fatalities then Fukushima caused health-problems in total.

[@michazajac5881]

@@Mommyandtux you would be surprised in how many ways it's a better place to live than western Europe...

[@Jwend392]

I want to drink beer with this guy.

[@cpanic1153]

If you do please get that tie away and burn it!

[@certaindeed]

Why?

[@woutertje026]

@@cpanic1153 didnt know he is a bus driver

[@christopherrichards3607]

Anyone notice his voice is strangely similar to Al Frankin?

[@alexanderd.7818]

13:20 There was a hike of heart attack rates, fatal alcohol poisonings, suicides and other fatalities among the affected people. I remember that my professor had said something like "we should've left these people to live where they wanted instead of forcibly evacuating them". The number of suicides and alcohol poisonings, when compared to excess cancer deaths, is leading to obvious conclusion that these long-term effects of contamination are not so dangerous as the reaction to them.

[@FrostedSeagull]

A nurse from the Moscow hospital, when the HBO series aired in June 2019 said numerous people received Iodine poisoning as they took way too much. People initially and incorrectly thought it would protect you from radiation sickness and reports of families swallowing a whole packet!

[@dragonsword7370]

Drinking wound antiseptic iodine, I remember that video.

[@danieldietsche2954]

Yes, I saw that video. She said taking the tablets about 12 hours after exposure was best... some took then days after, which she said would not have really helped. She also commeted on the hollywood 'liberties' taken, to make those early victims look so horrible.

[@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk]

Anyone have a link to that iodine OD video?

[@danieldietsche2954]

@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk Here is the link the to that former Ukranian doctor commenting on the HBO series kzbin.info/www/bejne/o2KqdoOpiLujkLs

[@andraslibal]

I remember my dad bringing the Geiger counter from work and measuring radiation in different places around town like the balcony of my aunt that was in the rain those days in 1986. I was also playing in the rain those weeks. Romania was still communist so the press was not telling us much about what happened but people knew ... and my dad could measure it (he worked with radiation measurements at the factory). Now that I think about it, we did get iodine tablets at school.

[@Zamolxes77]

We didn't get them at school, we got them at home. Also in Romania :)

[@mmdirtyworkz]

I don't remember taking iodine pills but we were told not to play (roll) in the grass and we didn't eat vegetables which were produced outside (Yugoslavia)

[@donnyl3336]

We set up monitoring on the roof of the hospital where I worked in Saskatchewan. Working in Nuclear Medicine at the time. We had detectable levels about 10-12 time’s background around a week after.

[@marc49lewis]

This man is *brilliant*. Would that I could have had someone like him as a teacher.

[@abrahamlincoln9758]

You do!

[@DriveCarToBar]

The explanations in these videos are so good. Makes me want to go back to school and get an engineering degree at U of IL.

[@toddrf]

I was there studying engineering right when he started teaching, but sadly, our paths never crossed.

[@israel3621]

Thank you for demystifying this event.

[@andrzejfilip4913]

In Poland, immediately after the incident, all the children were given iodine (so called “lugola” liquid) despite official message from Moscov being that no measures should be undertaken.

[@piotrfila3684]

My history teacher lived in north-eastern Poland when the disaster happened. From what she told it is true that iodine was given out, but it was was a bit too late - a couple of days after the disaster. She actually got thyroid cancer and she is taking meds (hormones, not chemo ofc) to this day.

[@puncheex2]

Yes. The cure for thyroid cancer is removal of the thyroid altogether. Most thyroid cancers do not metastasize, so once its gone it's gone, but th hormones manufactured in the thyroid (which use that hoarded iodine) have to be replaced for the rest of one's life. Generally the source of the radioiodine is from milk produced by cows in contaminated fields.

[@jackfanning7952]

Good information that seems objective is critical to the general public to assess the potential hazards of complex issues and make decisions.

[@Waldemarvonanhalt]

Due to the stochastic effects of radiation we'll never be able to determine just how many people were affected, but it's safe to say the disaster wasn't nearly as apocalyptic as some people try to make it out to be.

[@lindaclement3407]

Along with the prior video, this is the best info I've found on KZbin on the subject of nuclear reactors. If you're interested in the subject, do check that one out as well. The prof is even more interesting than Jarod Harris playing Legasov. ;)

[@vaakdemandante8772]

It's quite common for women in Poland to suffer from Hashimoto and those women were mostly children when the Chernobyl happened. Hashimoto is related to thyroid inflammation because the body actively tries to kill thyroid cells - possibly because they would otherwise lead to cancer. You don't have to die from Chernobyl to suffer life long consequences and have significantly diminished quality of life in the process.

[@linkscape1957]

It wasn't just the fire fighters. Workers also died in days and weeks following. Even Dyatlov, who was in charge of the room that night died of radiation related illness after serving 10 years in prison. Then there was Sitnikov who they forced to look down into an open reactor to prove it wasn't in tact.

[@Engrphotog21]

Dyatlov also survived a previous incident when he was working at a shipyard that built nuclear subs. Chernobyl was the 2nd time he received a high dose of radiation. He lived a fairly long time considering those 2 incidents.

[@thelocomotive77]

Great video. I wrote a college paper about Belarus, and the spike in pediatric thyroid cancers.

[@pR1mal.]

Have you ever seen, "Chernobyl Heart"? kzbin.info/www/bejne/oHfaeHipf8xlg6s

[@marcinna8553]

@Matt S We used radiation routinely in the lab to generate mutations in growing cells. This is established science.

[@TomJakobW]

Matt S First, that is not the definition of "mutation", second, what you describe as impossible is well known standard in the genetic sciences (Hermann Müller, Lewis Stadler); second, it's not only about DNA, but also its Organisation (chromosomes etc.); if there is enough damage (and ionizing radiation DOES damage DNA) to the DNA or chromosomes, then the repair mechanisms will fail because of the extensive damage or other failures - a mutation is created. If all of this happens early (gametes) then you even have a hereditary mutation. I legitimately don't understand you; it seems, you are up top something.

[@lovehonourlove3964]

"Don't be a Moron, use the rod with Boron" - Henry

[@AnotherEarthling666]

Still nothing to the death rate linked to coal plants and mining and let's remember Chernobyl was an accident. Well functioning nuclear plants do not cause harm,not even when handling radioactive waste. This is something people should take in consideration. At the moment,nuclear power is the only solution to our thirst of energy without triggering a global climate shift which would cause millons of deaths and billions of economical loss. I am amazed that such a disaster like Chernobyl caused just around 5000 death, still a tragedy, people died, but a fair comparison must be done.

[@thomasholaday674]

and it was due to very poor design

[@jasonlast7091]

I don't think any of this is in dispute in the video.

[@MihzvolWuriar]

Officially it's not even over 600 by 2020, that's what pollution kills every week, or even more, people need to understand that there was an extremely long chain of events that caused this (over 12 hours of stupid decisions), and that current reactors are safe, to this end, nuclear energy it's not only the cheapest, but also the cleanest *and the safest* we have.

[@Temo990]

"Only solution"? Not true. About what country are you talking about? At least here in Germany around 40% percent of energy is already from renewable sources despite the fact that politics haven't bothered to do much for climate protection. And nuclear power is going to be shutdown down due to polical decisions which were made after the Fukishima incident..

[@MihzvolWuriar]

@@Temo990 And yet, Germany has the most expensive energy price, when he meant "the only solution," he meant energy at low price, and that's nuclear, if I have to work half a month just to pay my electric bill, I'll just buy a diesel generator and fuck that law.

[@craigstinchcomb5260]

Nice Job!!! Well done!

[@bartdeking]

In other video's you showed links to literature which in case of this subject is necessary for a strong case and sceptical viewers. If it is backed by research it is an interesting conclusion.

[@codywichman213]

ive been searching for this info, it was great to find it in one video!

[@freezerguy]

I just figured out how he writes backwards so seamlessly. The video is played back in mirror image. His wedding ring is on the wrong hand. But regardless these videos are highly educational.

[@gabrielpalacios9023]

thank you 😅

[@joechang8696]

In the navy, operations specialists maintain a maneuvering board, which is clear plastic/glass board about 4 ft x 4ft, showing the position of nearby ships, along with various symbols. The OS stands behind the board, must write in reverse, so the captain, and others can see it in normal. So it is possible to learn to write backwards. But good catch in this case

[@MrRichard57000]

nono,an overdose of gamma radiation gave him supernatural powers.

[@crazy031089]

Anyone else who watched the hbo series and started to wonder how many people got lung cancer from chain smoking instead of radiation related cancer?

[@zargorn]

Many more! Wind turbines, smoking, water power, diet, and traffic, all kill much more people. Coal is particularly deadly, even when nothing goes wrong.

[@ataarono]

@@zargorn how the.... WIND TURBINES ACTUALLY KILL PEOPLE I DIDNT KNOW LOL

[@uegvdczuVF]

I remember watching an interview with men who worked on monitoring reactor 4 years after the accident. When a interviewer asked about somewhat loose attitude of the staff, they didn't wear the dosimeters even in front of the camera, one of them responded by listing the names of other engineers who worked there that had died. The cause of death was heart disease. Than he said something like: we know now where we can go and where we can't, on this job stress will kill you before the radiation does. Even then i thought "stress, five packs of smokes and half of bottle after work every day will do that"....

[@zargorn]

@@ataarono A lot of deaths during maintenance. Essentially workers fall off them while fixing problems.

[@infantjones]

@Andreas Velten @ataarono It actually isn't just deaths during maintenance, but also deaths resulting from the entire extraction and manufacturing process. Many waste products come from the mines and factories which seep into the groundwater, not to mention deaths in the mines and so on. This grows immensely when energy storage requirements are taken into account. While nuclear has the same mining and manufacturing process, it's on a much smaller scale due to the inherent energy density of the source, whereas wind (and solar, which is much dirtier than wind for a few reasons) requires a much larger scale production process for the same amount of electricity generation capacity.

[@juztnlast953]

I would say that the fire fighters were heroes and it is absolutely unfair to make the argument that they died of radiation poisoning from negligence in training. The power plant put out a standard fire call to the fire department. The power plant officials concealed the true damage to the nuclear reactor until radiation detected in the West forced them to make any admissions. The night of the accident those fire fighters were under the impression they were being called to put out a typical fire on the roof of the power plant. The fire fighters responded by putting out the fire without discrimination as far as their concerns were about the nuclear reactor they deferred to the personnel inside the plant to worry about the nuclear reactor. Unfortunately the firefighters were intentionally kept in the dark, and they died from radiation poisoning.

[@SeattleSandro]

I was 10 at the time and living just across the river from New York City. I remember hearing about it at school from the teachers and seeing it on the news, but nobody ever really explained it to us. To us, it was just a bad thing that happened far away. For us kids in the US the Challenger explosion that happened just 4 months earlier was a lot more impactful, though obviously, indirectly.

[@Blackreaper777]

I feel like Chernobyl did a huge disservice to a future nuclear power, as many people don't understand much about radiation or how nuclear reactors work and they are actively resisting the idea of nuclear power based on this accident. Everyone should be watching videos on this channel as they are excellent and maybe the perception would start to change.

[@Temo990]

Not only that accident. But the Fukushima accident as well. After scientists (and coporations) promised for so long that nuclear meltdown is so unlikely, it happened twice in short time. And obviously the fact that Japan is one of the most advanced industrial countries in the world does make it even worse.

[@Blackreaper777]

@@Temo990 Yeah, but Fukushima was nowhere even near as big as Chernobyl and it happened because mother nature decided to throw a spanner in the works. I guess to the uninformed it doesn't matter.

[@catfishman1768]

@@Temo990 it is argued that no one or very very few died from radiation poisoning at Fukushima. Remember to always say “Compared to what?”. If power isn’t generated by nuclear energy it will still be generated and what are the costs of that?

[@420sakura1]

​@@Temo990first accident: 1986 The second accident: 2011 after an unprecedented Earthquake and Tsunami hit Japan which killed 10k+ people. TMI was contained and the former president Jimmy Carter who visited the epicenter of the disaster is still alive at 99+. Nuclear energy is dangerous and should be treated as such but the potential benefits outweigh the risks it will pose. Just asking, have you been to a town close to where they mine oil and Coal?

[@Dave5843-d9m]

Can you discuss the acute v chronic effects of radiation exposure. Lymphocytes from people living in area with naturally high background radiation (eg Ramsar Iran) has 56% less damage than those from low background radiation. Their annual dose is 260mSv whereas 20mSv is the max allowed for nuclear industry workers. See Mortasavi et al Health Physics 2002. Shibiao et al, Health Physics, 2018 show evidence of a LOWER cancer mortality in the high background area of Yangjing, China.

[@rickjohnson1632]

Thanks for taking the time to explain 👍

[@CaptainCalculus]

I know a guy who lived in Kiev at the time. They didn’t have iodine pills, so they told people to get the iodine from wound cream, dilute it in hot water and drink it. It gave you diarrhoea but was effective.

[@0nkelD0kt0r]

Also quite a lot of people had much worse effects from this than diarrhoea. It might be effective against radioactive Iodine isotopes, but if you are puking blood beccause you took way too much of it, things aren't that funny anymore. There were quite a number of cases where this happened. People thought if some Iodine helps then a lot of it can't hurt either.

[@jeepxj]

unreal this only has 19 views.

[@tota0523]

True

[@marekmasar5216]

No wonder why.. It's fucking propaganda..

[@CG-ln1le]

@@marekmasar5216 Go wear your tinfoil hat

[@DrCruel]

@@marekmasar5216 You didn't see graphite.

[@winkenschurst5995]

@@DrCruel YOU DIDNT BECAUSE IT IS NOT THERE

[@rmorrison944]

Excellent work

[@Chess613]

It just occurred to me that this is being filmed inverse. The brilliant doctor has his watch and his wedding ring on his "right" hand and he's able to write backwards so we can read it. Or so we think. His watch and ring is really on his left hand and he's writing normally with his right hand, but the video is seen inverse (think that's the right term for it). Either way, what a brilliant professor!

[@ZT_Performance]

Mind fuck lol Thx

[@basedgodstrugglin]

The health effects of a chest X-ray you mean?

[@FrostedSeagull]

Lol BasedGod..., 3 roengen is equal to 88,000 x-rays in one go! That fact alone speaks value.

[@OrbitalSP2]

@@FrostedSeagull I don't think so. 3.6 roengen equals 40 chest x rays

[@joechiodi5529]

Old. Stop...

[@renkemet]

Dear professor, i am quite impressed by what you are doing and how you are doing. I would like to get more systematic knowledge on the matters like radioactivity, radioactivity survey and measurements and defence. I think the main problem with nuclear technology today is that public literacy on this subject, awarness, monitoring and defense are just unmatched to the level of this dangerous industry spread.

[@pR1mal.]

Anatoly, I highly suggest the following lecture series. It's from a course named "Physics for Future Presidents" which is taught at U.C. Berkeley by Prof. Richard Mueller. kzbin.info/aero/PLDGjfpzzwYX4NwbQThgezgAM76JrLU5wK

[@JungleJargon]

They made us march in the rain.

[@AngelLestat2]

12:46 Why that part is cut from the video??

[@77chevy4x4]

Over Poland in 86 .. yeah .. I went there for a summer vacation. Ate everything and anything from the ground it was country living. .. and hiked all over the lands and castles.. 44 years old today. I must’ve been lucky .

[@linkscape1957]

This professor seems very knowledgeable. However, I'd like to see him critique the speech by Valery Legasov at the end of Chernobyl. Did the cheaper Graphite tipped control rods react with the xenon?

[@chrisvig123]

There were numerous factors that let to the explosion...it was a very dangerous reactor design which would never be allowed today😯

[@clancyjames585]

The graphite-tipped rods were indeed a *huge* factor in the explosion - this is 100% agreed upon by experts. Some things which are not agreed upon are: what was the nature of the second explosion (the hydrogen explanation is merely one of several theories); would the reactor have exploded anyway, even if the scram signal had not been given (recall there was a reason scram was pressed in the first place!); and what was the role of the reduced water flow at the time of the accident (at least, there are some queries to this, not sure if concensus has been reached). The explanation of Xenon in the series is perfectly correct - it caused the initial decrease in power, then started to get "burned" away, and this initiated the initial increase in power. However, the graphite-tipped rods didn't interact with the xenon in any way, these were independent effects.

[@frankpaws]

Love this series.

[@Diglo1]

A few thousand deaths or shortened lifespans is really not that bad. In terms of how much power a nuclear plant makes vs any other power industries, the deaths are surprisingly low. AND this is the worst nuclear accident ever and this happened due to bad decisions inside the plant. The reactor did what it was suppose to do. Nuclear energy is much safer and doesn't have any emissions besides the mining of the uranium and the building process. People can choose to emit carbon to into our atmosphere and cause a lot more death due to green house effect or choose to take power from nuclear reactor. Statistics talks for themselves, nuclear is simply better.

[@oliviersourie280]

Diglo1 you forgot the nuclear waste....

[@Diglo1]

@@oliviersourie280 Are you suggesting it can't be properly disposed off?

[@justinlloyd6455]

You speak from a smug, armchair perspective. Why don't you head over to www.chernobyl-international.com/gallery/ and see the photos of horrendously deformed children who've been affected from the nuclear accident for the last 35 years or so. Maybe then you'll change your mind that "its really not that bad."

[@MatthijsvanDuin]

@@justinlloyd6455 Making photographs of children with health problems does not consistute evidence that those health problems are related to Chernobyl. Moreover you're missing the point, while perhaps "is really not that bad" is an unfortunate choice of words (severe health problems are always really bad to those affected and those close to them), what matters is how it compares to other forms of power generation. An image gallery like this is specifically designed to incite emotion, and does not contribute to rational analysis of the risks and benefits of nuclear power.

[@Frank71]

@@Diglo1 Just to add in....nuclear technology is really outdated. These plants are a 1950s or 60 design....surely we can come up with some improvements in the nuclear power front.

[@marcinna8553]

The long-term medical effects of of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings have been studied for decades and show surprisingly little overall effect. Of course people receiving the highest levels of exposure had a significant increase in leukemia, but the overall increased cancer rate among bomb survivors was surprisingly small, on the order of a fraction of a percent. There has been no statistically significant differences in the health of the 2nd generation of Hiroshima survivors versus the general population. This is not an argument for complacency by any means, but just to put into perspective the relative dangers of nuclear contamination versus say coal mining or smoking. Far more residents of Hiroshima died from cigarettes than from the residual effects of radiation (but when I lived in Japan they had cigarette vending machines on every street corner). There are hundreds of scientific papers on this subject that you can find online; Hiroshima/Nagasaki has to be one of the most intensively studied examples of radiation exposure anywhere. . Here is one meta-analysis if you want a place to start: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4981260/

[@justinlloyd6455]

The "little over all effect" you describe is mostly due to an Air-burst. It was thought that if the bomb was higher off the ground, it would expand better and cause more destruction. The opposite is true, discovered later in Nevada tests. The ground level explosions caused a different type of shock wave that caused more destruction. Also, a nice benefit to this is more fallout to kill even more people. Since the surface is irradiated, higher amounts of contaminated fallout is created. Nuclear war will kill billions due its multiple and cumulative effects.

[@thoso1973]

Chernobyl had much, much more material emitting radiation than the bombs had. It was also continuous over days and weeks, whereas the fission material in the bombs were vaporized in nano seconds.

[@timrosencrans7955]

There aren’t any alpha emitters in fission products as radioactive as polonium. The main alpha emitters are plutonium and Americium that are 200x less radioactive (and they Are in very small amounts as they are fission products). As you pointed out liquidators would not likely suffer much I’ll effects as there protective gear would have prevented any radio toxic exposure leaving them only carefully monitored radiation exposure. Yes there are guilds liquidators are tracked and provided healthcare. And no there have been large spikes in death rates or decreases in life expectancy in the Ukraine.

[@EMETRL]

I spent a year at UIUC. In another life where I made better choices but also had more professors like you, I would have stayed there longer.

[@no_more_free_nicks]

9:02 - Hi, I was a child in Poland when Chernobyl blew up, and I remember drinking the "Płyn Lugola" what in English is Lugol's iodine. You videos are great and informative, thanks for doing this. I never had issued with my thyroid so far (43) but you cannot say it about my sister.

[@bidask123]

Normally KZbin's algorithms point me to the same o same o. Then KZbin got real and pointed me to this. I have watched at least 2 hours of Illinois EnergyProf's videos and I will not stop anytime soon.

[@NeAZ]

I'm a Spaniard currently living in Poland and people in my age here recall having to take potassium iodide back when they were small children. It's kind of eerie if you think about it.

[@jackfanning7952]

The largest release of radioactive iodine in world history occurred at the Savannah River site in the 1950s. The general public downwind of the release were not provided with potassium iodide. Surprise, surprise, thyroid cancer and hypothyroidism is elevated in the exposed population.

[@glenclean7901]

Op probably won't see this.. but what would the effects have been on children born around that time as far away as the UK? I was born April 20th and was constantly in the garden in my pushchair (against the governmental advice I know) I have friends who were born between the end of '85 mid june '86 and we all have thyroid issues. Just a coincidence or could it be linked?

[@ExplorewithSvetlin]

I want to vlog in Chernobyl with this guy.

[@swarog3]

In 1988 I had gone out of the school in Warsaw in Poland with a white paper. It was raining. The paper became violet in the rain. The iodine is violet.

[@MrTooTechnical]

Great vid. More please

[@tensevo]

Imagine being evacuated from Pripyat 34 years ago, now, just sitting down to learn about what actually happened. What is this fallout they keep talking about?

[@lefter6708]

Those scientists were from north-eastern Poland (which makes sense if you look how fallout was spreading). They convinced even government to take counter-measures. What's interesting mr. Zbigniew Jaworski in one interview stated that giving Lugol Iodine was unnecessary, but they werent sure of the scale of accident.

[@rlhugh]

I feel that you would make a stronger case if you didnt write question marks, and if you didnt try to push a "threshold theory", which ive never heard about, and dont really believe. Just write 5000 dead over the 6 million, for a total of 10,000 people dead. Its a lot, but divide by the number of years and so on, and its not so many. Compare it with deaths in europe from cars.

[@CommandLineCowboy]

7:02 "Caesium can be taken up in the bone". Sure you aren't confusing Caesium for Strontium? From www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969718306831 "he lowest levels of caesium are found in bones and fat". Strontium is a definite bone accumulator, caesium much less so 70% of uptake goes to muscles and an overall biological half life of 70 days.

[@Xnothen]

" if it blows up?" You are mistaken, comrade. AN RBMK reactor does not explode.

[@raymcelveen1952]

Xnothen but it did. Not a nuclear explosion but a chemical explosion.

[@maverikmiller6746]

4:15 North f Turkey seems to be hit hard by Chernobyl (getting hit by red part)

[@jari2018]

It didnt happen much like other things in T urkey .Turkes cant handle truths or can and ignore or as in this case the people living in those areas are inferior .it happened to people who dont matter.

[@shaununger9350]

Question that may be unknowable. The cost to the USSR was enormous to clean up Chernobyl. Let’s say we calculate net present value to build real containment buildings over all their civilian reactors. Would that have been cheaper or more expensive in 2020 dollars or rubbles to clean up the explosion or build the containment buildings?

[@johngudgeon7454]

2:15 oh gods, he’s started taking his clothes off....

[@neddyladdy]

He has pretensions of being a quick change artist.

[@Chobaca]

😂

[@markstaddon4993]

I was wondering about those 134 firefighters 47 died fast, how long did the others live?

[@jonarmedpiandsecurityoffic9051]

Not long

[@dalmar23]

Not common knowledge. Poland was actually faster than Germany to notice the problem. Experimental nuclear reactor near Warsaw ( named Maria lol) sounder alarm on the 29 april. After like 6 hours of checking and eliminating internal problem gov officials were informed that probably there was nuclear explosion somewhere near Polands eastern border. Soviet Union officially asked by Poles about radiation levels denied everything. Unit or helicopters (2) was dispatched with devices to monitor levels of radiation. They were flying nearly 2 months due north western borders. The data they gathered was instantly put as confidentional and at the end of that year destroyed.

[@GeFlixes]

This is absolutely astonishing: The greatest civil nuclear disaster of history, and just this year, more people died in coal mining accidents and through lung diseases that are caused by coal emissions or cancers stemming from radioactive parts in coal dust. Coal energy is orders of magnitude more lethal (in deaths per kWh) than nuclear energy. And still, nuclear power is evil while coal burning is actually increasing. The psychological aspect of risk management is pure irrationality. Further reading: ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy

[@louisbarbisan8471]

Btw, coal extraction and processing is not the way it use too. And,,,, 80%+ of CO2 is removed before burning. But there again, CO2 is plant food.

[@GeFlixes]

@@louisbarbisan8471 That response strikes me as uninformed. Co2 is "plant food", yes. Up to a point, plants grow faster with more Co2 in the air. The problem is that we're putting more Co2 into the air than the plants take out. Most importantly: Co2 can't be removed before burning. The main outputs of coal burining ARE carbonoxides, water vapour and energy. You can't remove something that's not there before burning.

[@klausgartenstiel4586]

i lived as a child in germany during cherobyl. and i spend april 2011 in tokyo. which of the two was worse?

[@mrjava66]

Klaus Gartenstiel from a public health perspective, the emission of radiation from Chernobyl was about 100 times the emission of fukishama, after you discount for the fact that 80% of the emission of fukishama fell into the Pacific Ocean. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_Chernobyl_and_Fukushima_nuclear_accidents. However, the situation for any particular individual would be highly dependent upon that person's particular circumstances.

[@leif_____8579]

Nobody really died from Fukushima, Chernobyl was 1000 times worse

[@klausgartenstiel4586]

@@mrjava66 thank you. another answer that came to mind: "the flight from germany to japan was probably the worst of the three." 😅

[@canadiannuclearman]

A good book on radiation ìs "Radiation and Reason" by Wade Allison

[@b87b84]

2:12 first time he removes his coat, maybe because he is talking about hot radiation. 🔥 🥵

[@ZT_Performance]

He is daddy

[@paulgent9203]

Reactor 3 was part of the reactor 4 building. If those fires were not extinguished it may have activated reactor 3. Those firefighters were hero’s. A number of them helped construct Reactor 4 they knew the dangers they were facing.

[@MichaelChiklisCares]

Dude, trying water on rods wont put fires out.

[@moxiecooper]

Interesting. Did he learn to write backwards for this presentation so the writings are legible to the viewers or is there another way to display writings from appearing backwards...mmmm

[@Tutterkop]

My parents told me that back then all of Europe had to thrown the milk away except for Belgium. Cause the fallout didn't pass there... The air was yellow. But no radiation. *Cough cough*

[@caygill2]

Air was yellow of what?

[@Tutterkop]

@@caygill2 of pollution/radiation clouds. Maybe my mother imagined it because of fear I dont know if it was actually yellow

[@PercivalBlakeney]

Into the Valley of Death went the six hundred thousand. Still, they went courageously forward, toward their own deaths: “Into the jaws of Death / Into the mouth of Hell Went the six hundred thousand Apologies to Tennyson 😪

[@TheFray212]

not all of the firefighters did die, but 6 of them who got the higher doses did

[@TheEulerID]

About 90% of the damage from ingested iodine-131 is from the beta particles, not the gamma rays, as the form are a bit more energetic and, more importantly, will all be absorbed by body tissue, which is not the case with the gamma rays. Fortunately, thyroid cancer is one of the more treatable cancers that humans suffer from with a very high cure rate.

[@tirobo]

Map here, in case anyone was wondering www.irsn.fr/EN/publications/thematic-safety/chernobyl/Pages/The-Chernobyl-Plume.aspx

[@b87b84]

Can you imagine this guy teaching computer science. Will be such amazing

[@katymarina]

What about all malformed babies? And births from people contaminated? In my opinion he's biased.

[@tapjar85]

Is this man writing backwards for us??

[@F1fan4eva]

13:55 wise fucking words. This gentleman is an asset to academia

[@colinmacdonald1869]

We're still looking at less than 100 confirmed fatalities, if NLRT is correct maybe another 10000 over 40years. Many of those will be Russian men in their 60's, whose average life expectancy is atound 70. To put into perspective Piper Alpha killed 166. And we didn't stop building offshore oil platforms after that. 23 years before Chernobyl a single dam disaster killed 2000 people. I'd never heard of it, but we all remember Chernobyl, 33years later.

[@jackfanning7952]

Do you think there are any unconfirmed deaths caused by radiation from nuclear power generation that are not attributed to it because of the long latency period? How many would you guess? What are you going to do with the waste for the next half million years? How many nuclear exclusion zones will we have in another 100 years? What are you going to do with the aging, leaking, radioactive megatons of steel and concrete from the aging reactors long past their projected life cycle? How about the radioactive tailings from mining? Where are you gonna get the 20,000 lbs of enriched nuclear fuel rods that each power plant needs per year to operate? How much will the mining and processing of that ore cost, especially since the percentage of uranium in the ore is less and less because the "good stuff" has already been mined (or 20% given to the Russians for a half million dollar bribe)? How much uranium waste tailing will be exposed from mining that ore? What happens to the radioactivity released from these mountains of tailings now exposed on the earth's surface? How much radon will be emitted from it? When will radon gas be the leading cause of lung cancer in the USA, instead of number two behind tobacco? How many hundreds of billions of dollars have we, the taxpayers, paid the power plants for storing the most dangerous substance known to mankind in overloaded open pools within 100 miles of all of our major population centers? How much have we already spent on Hanford, Savannah River Site, New Mexico WIPP, Nevada Proving Grounds, Yucca Repository, SRS MOX site? What happens if one of the Jethro Bodine cement ponds fails or if a Homer Simpson stupidly screws it up? How much bigger than Chernobyl and Fukushima will that be? Do you think that there would be any unconfirmed deaths from that? What would it cost. Would it cause the USA economy to collapse like the Soviet Union and Japan? Just asking.

[@colinmacdonald1869]

@@jackfanning7952 You're not addressing the NLRT question. Perhaps you don't know what it is, in which case you should be able to find out, it's not difficult. The figures I have are based on NLRT which is a worst case scenario and take into account latency. NLRT assumes that even the smallest dose of radiation has the potential to cause cancer, there is virtually no evidence for this, it's widely accepted because we're ruled by the precautionary principle, if we ordered our private lives in the same way we would never use cars or even go out our front doors. I say again, the figures I cite are the worst case, you seem to cite unscientific bollox from Greenpeace. There is zero evidence for them. Do we see "latency" in the 100000 liquidaters who cleaned up Chernobyl? No we don't! If we don't see it amongst those who received "dangerously" high doses of radiation we're highly unlikely to see it in the general population.

[@colinmacdonald1869]

@@jackfanning7952 Perhaps we should ban cars, and cease using hydro, coal, gas, solar power, all of which cause more injuries and fatalities than nuclear energy. As for waste warehoused in Nuclear facilities, how many fatalities has that caused? Ermmm... Zero. Zip. Nada.

[@jackfanning7952]

@@colinmacdonald1869 I am addressing the extreme cost and danger of nuclear energy. We are 75 years in on nuclear energy and already have a unsustainable legacy of death and destruction from nuclear energy production. We haven't solved the irresolvable problems of waste disposal, decommissioning reactors, declining supplies of commercial-grade ore, astronomical economic cost of catastrophic events, inability to find investors willing to risk their money on financing or insuring nuclear energy and ever-increasing ambient radiation levels. You are turning a blind eye to these problems. It is ironic that I worked with Dr. Allison MacDonald of the London School of Tropical Medicine and Industrial Hygiene and Dr. John Dement of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, who both agreed that even a single mutation in mitosis can result in a dormant cell that eventually can cause massive production of cancer cells. Onset of disease is linked to compromise of our immune system. These epidemiologists are respected in their field and never worked for Greenpeace. Unscientific bollox is in the eyes of the beholder, Mr. Bollox.

[@tirobo]

@@jackfanning7952 One question. Do do you say about global warming? how are you gonna solve that without nuclear?

[@Miguel_El_Chileno]

radiation anxiety ?!

[@puncheex2]

7:02 Cesium-137 is unique because it is fairly plentiful as a fission product, and it has a mid-range half-life (30 years). As shown by a graph in the Wikipedia page on Chernobyl Disaster, it has taken over from shorter-lived FPs as the major (nearly 100%) contaminant at Chernobyl, and will remain so for about 300 years, when it will fall below the residual uranium on the site at near background levels. 7:48 "Of the 30 or so firemen they all died." Well, no. The fire captain, Leonid Petrovich Telyatnikov, absorbed 4 Grays but lived until 2004. There were some others as well. Officially, 31 plant workers (operators, guards and firemen) died, 29 of them by ARS.

[@taraswertelecki7874]

Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 are two of the most dangerous fission products because they are long lived, they are common byproducts of nuclear fission, and they are reactive chemically and stick to everything. They are readily absorbed into the body, and displace calcium. It takes 300 years for them to decay completely away to natural background levels.

[@turningpoint4238]

It was good that he touched on the psychological effects of the incident but was underplayed. This probably killed more people that the radiation. Vasts amounts of people where displaced and put through mental stress it's quite surprising how many will die earlier from this. You may well say just educate people better but the reality is people don't understand radiation so it scares them and they will not be educated for one reason or another. People are not logical if they were we would be working far harder to reduce our CO2 emissions and support renewables.

[@MrSunrise-]

The psychological effects have been more thoroughly studies at Fukushima. It is *certain* that more people have died of the stress of displacement than would have died from radiation if they had not been evacuated. (There may be some argument for evacuating them anyway to protect them from the effects of a clean-up accident, but the comparison is still valid.)

[@randaddy2000]

Are the chernobyl isotopes measurable in my body in 2023? I was born in 84.

[@Ry-ss5dz]

Someone buy this dude a new tie

[@maggiejetson7904]

The most important safety measure of nuclear energy is the operators

[@bjrnb9042]

did it have any positive heath effects?

[@wyatt1339]

Bjørn B my third arm is pretty useful sometimes

[@bjrnb9042]

@@wyatt1339 that literary sounds handy

[@AngelLestat2]

Yeah, it is weird we did not see an increase rate of X-men or daredevils in the zone. USA was far away and still they have the higher number of mutants.

[@crazy031089]

I have read somewhere that cancers in these groups are more oftem found because of more check ups, and that the cancer survival rate would be higher then comparable groups of people because they are discovered earlier. It makes sense tough, normaly only a few cancers are actively encouraged to be periodically checked like breast cancer and so on, with other cancers more likely to be discovered by coincidence or after some symptoms starts to appear. While this group of people is apperantly checked more vigorously periodically.

[@AngelLestat2]

@@crazy031089 *that cancers in these groups are more often found because of more check ups* You really think that in normal population if they avoid checks ups the cancer would disappear and nobody would notice?? LOL, one way or another everybody notice they have cancer at some point and you end in the medic soon or later.

[@MrKeserian]

I was a PoliSci major in college, with a specialization in statistical analysis. I'm not going to pretend I understand 99% of the physics involved in this, but I understand the statistics. The linear threshold model is wrong. We have both biological reasoning and statistical modeling to show that it doesn't fit the observations we've gathering from radiation exposures. So, my question is, why are we still using it?

[@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk]

Why is it wrong? If you look at cancer rates in Ukraine and all the surrounding countries, you will clearly see no great increase in cancer rates as compared to other nations of the world.

[@MrKeserian]

@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk yes, I'm not saying that radiation doesn't cause cancer (obviously it does), but that assuming any increase in radiation exposure increases cancer risk is logically ridiculous. We're exposed to ionizing radiation every second of every day. Heck, standing inside of the biological containment vessel of an active nuclear plant (so, the huge concrete shell that surrounds the actual reactor pressure vessel) actually decreases your radiation exposure. The body has systems in place to repair radiation damage, and to detect when that repair has gone wrong. So, there is a threshold below which we can say "okay, this amount of exposure over time is safe." The problem is that finding that level isn't entirely practical to set up a study for. As to the Ukraine, the destruction of unit 4 at the Chernobyl NPP was something of a worst case scenario. Not only did the reactor melt, but it also exploded and blasted everything from fuel element bits to its carbon moderator into the sky. Heck, you can still find small pieces of fuel elements and graphite around the area of the ChNPP. If the Soviets had built that plant with a biological containment vessel, like most western plants have, it would probably have contained the reactor bits that were blasted out of the core. Unit 4 would still have been a total loss, but it wouldn't have been an international crisis. Of course, that would require the RBMK to be designed with safety as a priority, so we're kinda into alternate universes at that point.

[@Peter_Enis]

4000*1.2%=15 ??

[@nicklewisatx]

I thought it was interesting that you didn't acknowledge how bad things can get when receive a fatal dose of radiation. E.g. what it means to you personally when ionizing radiation breaks your DNA apart.

[@ataarono]

He did mention the first respondents all dying

[@puncheex2]

If your DNA is "broken apart", the cell it is in is probably a goner. But we lose a million cells a second anyway. If you mean your DNA gets damaged and thus mutated, that causes cancer in autosomal cells and slim chance of inheritable mutations in germ cells. Tat latter has never actually been observed in humans.

[@puncheex2]

@@ataarono Yes. "responders".

[@ataarono]

@@puncheex2 Yea and wildlife doesn't care about the radiation nowadays in Chernobyl either. Just people who are too scared

[@TheAngelOfDeath01]

I grew up in Denmark and I remember mom buying Potassium Iodide.

[@dmitrigutorin944]

Comrades, here is some statistics for you. About 450 miners were in Chernobyl, about 200 have died by this year. Cause of death - various health diseases and suicides. Lot of suicides because of health sicknesses, neverending pain. We are talking about miners - very strong people mentally and physically. So the quality of life for those poor chernobyl survivors has dropped extremely low.

[@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk]

So for half of the miners to have died in 35 years is some sort of fear mongers dog whistle? Even is they were 20 years old in 1986, that would make such a person 55 today. You might want to check the life expectancy of a miner in the rest of the world.

[@danielsnook5029]

I was in the toilet, what'd I miss?;)

[@longlakeshore]

A roomie of mine was a high school exchange student living in Kiev when the meltdown happened. They were not warned. Fallout rained down on them all. The Soviets didn't even cancel May Day celebrations. Everyone was out in it. Nuclear power is safe. It will be too cheap to meter. Right.

[@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk]

Nuclear power is the safest, get over it or get off the grid. usclimateandhealthalliance.org/post_resource/how-deadly-is-your-kilowatt-we-rank-the-killer-energy-sources/

[@longlakeshore]

@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk Go live the Chernobyl exclusion zone if you think it's so safe. Choose a hot spot and stay there. Oh wait they'd arrest you and put you in a straight jacket if you tried.

[@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk]

@@longlakeshore Well you can be ignorant if you want. Most of those areas shouldn't even be exclusion zones. medium.com/generation-atomic/for-the-first-time-world-learns-truth-about-risk-of-nuclear-6b7e97d435df

[@longlakeshore]

@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk Coward. Put your body where your mouth is.

[@EstOptimusNobis]

A friend of mine knew a girl from UBC in Vancouver who had come back early from a Minsk university exchange right after the explosion. She set off the radiation alarms at the TRIUMF particle accelerator when she went to class the next week. They found out she was OK, but her shoes were contaminated. She had left them out on the balcony of her hotel in Minsk.

[@qwertasd7]

Those days a lot of fruits and vegetables where exported to Romania and other Eastern countries. Lots birth's went wrong for over a year. You can verify in demographic maps. It's an untold story.

[@benighted09]

Peter Boos reference please

[@JohnMaxGriffin]

I’d also like to see a reference

[@timrosencrans7955]

Because it’s a fake story... us scientists have studied it and found nothing.

[@danielstrobel3832]

Is that cool! South german schientists discovered that during an experiment? I work at the resach reactor of the Tecnical University of Munic as a tecnichian! Wohoooo! There is a chance that one of our guys participatet in that experiment that found out about that mess?

[@Brain_quench]

He's a combination of khan academy and the Visine Guy

[@mscellarbuffy6617]

Why risk uranium, coal, oil use when we have a giant nuclear reactor in the sky that we could use without the risk of contaminated land that cannot be inhabited for tens of thousands of years after a nuclear accident. Why? We would already have renewable energy at a highly functional level if the big oil and coal lobbies hadn't interfered with progress on this for decades.

[@deaddropholiday]

Caesium-137 and Radioiodine are certainly problematic. But they are just two ingredients in a witch's brew of exotic fission products which were ejected from the Chernobyl core. Many of them have half-lives numbered in years, decades even centuries, have a high affinity for human tissue and are several orders of magnitude more dangerous than C-137 and I-131.

[@puncheex2]

The fission products almost all have half-lives of 30 years or less. The ones with long half-lives were the uranium and trans-actinides. Cs-137 is by far the worst of all of them; it dominates the amount of radioactivity in the region more than ten to one after the first 3 years until 300 years. Long half-lives are not terribly dangerous.

[@deaddropholiday]

@@puncheex2 Errr... no. Plutonium isotopes have half lives ranging from 80 years to several thousand. And you only need a vapour of that crap inhaled to grant you a death sentence.

[@puncheex2]

@@deaddropholiday Heh. Got a reference to back that up? Someone later than ralph Nader, say? Tell you what - look up Albert Stevens, and tell me how he did it.

[@deaddropholiday]

@@puncheex2 www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8927705

[@puncheex2]

@@deaddropholiday OK, you showed me yours, and I've showed you mine. I'm not surprised beagles died with 68 Grays of anything in their lungs. There is obviously differences in how was its administered and handled in the bodies. You are still wrong about FP half-lives in "decades even centuries". Plutonium is still not as dangerous as Cs-137 or I-131, let alone "several orders of magnitude". Specifically: I can't get to the original paper from the PubMed citation so I have no idea what the total dosage was or how long they were exposed to it; they seem to be really coy about what their "IBT" was. I read no indication that they were trying to simulate any sort of realistic dosage, that was not their goal, just as it wasn't the goal in the Albert Stevens experiment. It's obvious that the dogs got a whole lot more than "a vapor of that crap" - 69 Grays is not any small amount of plutonium. More to the point, when talking about Chernobyl, plutonium is not a noticeable contaminant. The fuel was U-235 enriched at 3-5%. U-235 has a biological half-life of 18-30 days depending n prophylaxis used, while plutonium's is 200 years.

[@JD-ce4so]

Squeak....goes the marker